Who should pay for ‘free’ college?

President Obama’s announcement of his proposal to provide free tuition for 9 million community college students coincides with the start of the spring semester at the community college where I’ve been teaching for 27 years.

Naturally, this proposal is of interest to me and my colleagues, as well as to our students, many of whom struggle each semester to scrape together enough money for tuition, fees, books and living expenses.

The details of Obama’s proposal haven’t been worked out entirely. It’s more concept than concrete plan, but the rough numbers include a price tag of around $60 billion over the next 10 years.

Six billion dollars a year sounds like a lot. On the other hand, CBS News reports that Americans spent $56 billion on their pets in 2013 alone.

In fact, I suspect that the prospects for the president’s proposal depend on issues that are more philosophical than fiscal. We nearly always find the money for things that we want. Extending education to more students isn’t as much a matter of how much it will cost as of who will be responsible for paying for it.

Sometimes the obvious is worth restating: whether Americans have really become more conservative or not, the rhetoric of our politics definitely has. It appeals to our sense of personal responsibility and, on the flip side, it capitalizes on our innate sense of shame for getting something for nothing.

Accordingly, conservative critics of Obama’s community college plan sniff dismissively that there’s no such thing as “free college.” I suspect, however, that few people, after a moment’s reflection, believe that there is.

But for the last couple of decades the story of colleges and universities has been a tale of diminishing state support and an associated shift in the burden of the cost of college onto students.

And why not? Students are the ones who benefit from their enhanced educations, and they’ll be compensated with higher lifetime incomes, making the average student debt of nearly $30,000 seem not so terrible.

But this line of reasoning ignores several things. The first is the public good that develops when more citizens are better educated. They become more productive, much more likely to be assets to our society, rather than encumbrances.

This is why I, childless, don’t mind paying taxes for your children to attend public schools. If more students are educated at community colleges, all of us — you, me, they, the economy, everyone — will be better off.

Second, resistance to the president’s proposal doesn’t take sufficiently into account how challenging the acquisition of a college education can be. Besides their tuition, books and fees, most college students pay a significant price in time, energy and the lost wages that they might have earned had they not been in school. Even if tuition is “free,” students will not be freeloading.

Finally, what goes on at community colleges shouldn’t be confused with the negative — and probably false — stereotypes often attached to four-year colleges and universities and their students. Indulge a little generalizing:

For the most part, community colleges don’t have the frills associated with four-year colleges and universities, no cushy dorms and fancy dining halls, no climbing walls, football teams or fraternities. As a rule, community college students are older — the average age at my college is around 27 — and many are intently focused on developing and enhancing practical skills that they will take back into the workforce. These students know what they want and are